“Broken Harbor”

One of the most satisfying pleasures of reading is bringing home a brand-new book by a beloved author and knowing you are going to love it. Tana French hardly needs my endorsement, but I just want to say that Broken Harbor was a fantastic read by a very talented author.

I like crime fiction. Tana French’s work elevates what would be a thrashingly good detective story into magnetically compelling psychological drama. Everything we love about her work is here: the atmosphere of sorrow, creepiness, dread, and foreboding; the intricate plot; the nuanced characters; the dialogue. Once again she has given us the perspective of a protagonist who played a side role in an earlier book. All we can do is chew our fingernails wondering which one will narrate her next offering.

I read this book late at night, comme il faut, and it really creeped me out a few times. I thought I saw things crawling on the wall. I had to adjust my reading light to make sure it stopped casting a shadow beyond the page. It got my pulse pounding. Now that I’m finished with it, I’m a little sad because… well, because it’s over and it’ll be a long wait until the next one.

PS I took a crack at the cryptogram on the Acknowledgments page. I’m pretty sure it’s either not in English or it is more than one layer of code.

DISCLAIMER

I'm not really a reviewer or a critic. First, what I write can't really be called reviews, because I deliberately leave out any kind of description of a book's plot or characters - I like a blank slate when I start a book and I'm assuming you do too. Second, I almost never criticize anything about a book. I love reading and it's rare for me to bring home a book that doesn't wow me or at least please me, which is why I don't accept ARCs. So if you're looking for real detail or insightful criticism, you'll have to track down a blogger smarter than me!

What I’m Reading This Week

(In case you want to drop everything, read it, and have a discussion about it with me):
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul - Bob Shacochis
AUDIO: The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt